Contents

Prelude

After a late start to the campaigning season owing to the
unusually harsh winter preceding it, the allied campaign of 1709
began in mid June. Unable to bring the French army under Marshal
Villars to battle owing to strong French defensive lines and
the Marshal's orders from Versailles not to risk battle, the Duke of
Marlborough concentrated instead on taking the fortresses of Tournai and Ypres. Tournai fell after an unusually long siege
of almost 70 days, by which time it was early September, and rather
than run the risk of disease spreading in his army in the poorly
draining land around Ypres, Marlborough instead moved eastwards
towards the lesser fortress of Mons, hoping by taking it to outflank the French
defensive lines in the west. Villars moved after him, under new
orders from Louis XIV to prevent the fall of
Mons at all costs - effectively an order for the aggressive Marshal
to give battle. After several complicated manoeuvres, the two
armies faced each other across the gap of Malplaquet, south-west of
Mons.

Battle

The allied army, consisting of a vast majority of Dutch and
Austrian troops, but also with considerable British and Prussian
contingents, was led by Marlborough and Prince Eugene of Savoy, while
the French and a contingent of Bavarians were commanded by Villars
and Marshal
Boufflers. Boufflers was officially Villars' superior but
voluntarily serving under him. The allies had about 86,000 troops
and 100 guns[1]
and the French had about 75,000 and 80 guns[2],
and they were encamped within cannon range of each other near what
is now the Belgian border[4]. At
9.00am on the 11 September, the Austrians attacked with the support
of Prussian troops under the command of Count Albrecht Konrad Finck von
Finckenstein, pushing the French left wing back into the forest
behind them. The Dutch under command of John William Friso,
Prince of Orange, on the Allied left wing, attacked the French
right flank half an hour later, and succeeded with heavy casualties
in distracting Boufflers enough so that he could not come to
Villars' aid.

Battle of Malplaquet

Villars was able to regroup his forces, but Marlborough and
Eugène attacked again, assisted by the advance of a detachment
under General Withers advancing on the French left flank, forcing
Villars to divert forces from his centre to confront them. At
around 1.00 pm Villars was badly wounded by a musket ball which
smashed his knee, and command passed to Boufflers. The decisive
final attack was made on the now weakened French centre by British
infantry under the command of the Earl of Orkney, which managed to occupy the
French line of redans. This
enabled the Allied cavalry to advance through this line and
confront the French cavalry behind it. A fierce cavalry battle now
ensued, in which Boufflers personally led the elite troops of the
Maison du Roi.
He managed no less than six times to drive the Allied cavalry back
upon the redans, but every time the French cavalry in its turn was
driven back by British infantry fire. Finally, by 3.00 pm
Boufflers, realising that the battle could not be won, ordered a
retreat, which was made in good order. The Allies had suffered so
many casualties in their attack that they could not pursue him. By
this time they had lost over 21,000 men, almost twice as many as
the French.[3]

Aftermath

Villars claimed that a few more such French defeats would
destroy the allied armies[5], the
historian John A. Lynn in his book The Wars of Louis XIV
1667-1714 terms this victory Pyrrhic[6] but the
attempt to save Mons failed, and the fortress fell on the 20th
October. Marlbrough himself was reported to have said, "Has God
then forgotten what I have done for him?".[7]
Nonetheless, news of Malplaquet, the bloodiest battle of the
eighteenth century, stunned Europe. The rumour that even
Marlborough had died became one of the most popular French folk
songs, Marlbrough s'en va-t-en
guerre. For the last of his four great battlefield
victories, Marlborough received no personal letter of thanks from
Queen Anne. Richard
Blackmore's Instructions to Vander Beck was virtually
alone among English poems in attempting to celebrate the "victory"
of Marlborough at Malplaquet, while it moved the English Tory
party to begin agitating for a withdrawal from the alliance as
soon as they formed a government the next year.

By the norms of warfare of the era, the battle was an allied
victory, as the French withdrew at the end of the day's fighting,
and left Marlborough's army in possession of the battlefield.
Unlike the Duke's previous victories, however, the French army was
able to withdraw in good order and relatively intact, and remained
a potent threat to further allied operations.